What’s the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? Stumble to the coffee maker? Brush your teeth? According to a 2010 study, at least one third of young women check Facebook first thing in the morning—even before they go to the bathroom! This study might be two years old, but I’m guessing, if anything, those numbers have only gone up.

Now it’s not wrong to check Facebook before you go to the bathroom. But we need to consider what our first thoughts and actions say about what we want most, what we think we need most.

Do you wake up more aware of that itch to see what’s happening online or are your first morning sensations of your desperate need for God? Does a few minutes with your laptop pull you out of bed more readily than a few minutes with your Bible?

It’s so easy to dismiss the simple pleasures of Pinterest or Facebook as harmless activities. But that’s exactly why we need to be careful. Even simple pleasures, especially simple pleasures, can drain our affections for God. John Piper has famously made the point:

“If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.” (Hunger for God, p. 23)

Each morning, how do you stuff your soul? With small things online, or great truths in God’s Word?

Our morning desires and activities, our first thoughts and inclinations, should be like the Psalmist: to hear, sing, pray, and be satisfied with the steadfast love of the Lord (5.3, 59.16, 90.14, 143.8). To put first things first.